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Mars Probe May Have Spotted Sojourner Rover
Maggie McKee writes "NASA's eagle-eyed Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter may have spotted the tiny, toaster oven-sized Sojourner rover just a few meters away from its companion, the Mars Pathfinder lander. It appears to have crawled there in an attempt to re-establish contact with the lander after the lander had already died.
But the pictures aren't clear enough to definitively ID the rover, and it's possible Sojourner simply took off on its own. If it were miraculously still alive after 10 years, it could be 3 kilometers away from Pathfinder — and probably impossible to find, even with MRO."
I spy with my litle eye something that starts with S.
SOJOURNER? Yay!
Red Rover, Red Rover, Let Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Come Over
.
;-)
Sorry, the image of the little one crawling to it's dad after a crash.. kinda choked me up ....
Guns are for wimps... Use a crossbow.. this way you can pin them to their chair when you go postal.
Was anyone else reminded of the scene when the one robot finds the other one after the guy hit it with an axe? Poor little robot...
Is Mars so boring now that we're just sending things there to look at other things we've sent there?
...in a dorky kind of way.
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
I'm a little robot.
I'm a little robot who is lost.
I'm a little robot who is lost from Earth.
If I'm a little robot who is found, please call the interstellar hot line 1-800-LOSTROBOTS.
I wonder why don't they try to image probes from Russian Mars probe program? It would be interesting and important to know why did they ultimately failed. Mars 2 and 3 even had small rovers which maybe could be imaged, if they were deployed.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
My eyes and monitor are good, but I can't tell what the labels are to. Couldn't anyone draw a line to whatever the item is that they think is the rover? I'm just not seeing it at all. It's like where's Waldo in black and white but with a much, much smaller Waldo.
stuff |
One probe leaves...
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
If you want to geek out and track the lifespan of the various Mars missions, you can do so on your Palm with MarsClock. If you want the desktop version check out Mars24. Both should be updated for Pheonix sometime this year.
Space and Computers.
;-)
is that a face I see on Mars?
There is a collection of much higher resolution pictures on the NASA site to the point you can see the ramps on the lander.
It is difficult to see whether the sojurner rover is nearby or not. The programming was set to make it do so but I like the thought of an intrepid little robot setting off on it's own.
"It's a magical world, Hobbes old buddy. Let's go exploring"
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
We're spending all this money so we can spot a lost robot millions of miles away, so why can't we point it back at earth and help me find my KEYS!
GAAAAH!
After we colonize Mars, the first one to find it gets a 25 million dollar coffee table for their new home!
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
What most amazes me are the Viking landers. Looking at some of the pictures they took, the quality is just great. And they kept transmitting information for years - I think Viking 2 finally died in 1982 or something, six years after landing. Cult 1970s technology!
This would be great if confirmed. The rover was programmed to move toward the lander station if I did not receive any commands for a certain period of time in order to improve its radio signal with the lander. But without a way to communicate with Earth (probably because the lander's batteries died and that rover relied on the lander for Earth contact), JPL had no way to know what the rover was doing during this time and if this emergency procedure was carried out. Now we may have an idea about how the rover did on its own. Perhaps it even built a clubhouse and spa during our absense :-)
Table-ized A.I.
MRO has only been on station a few months, since March. Imaging these four American landers were probably higher priorities than older Soviet landers.
I believe the appearent bias is for technical reasons, such as newer radio tracking technology, and the fact that surface images are used to help find the landing sites. No Soviet probe ever returned a surface image.
Somebody discovered that if they stretch the vertical scale of a Viking surface image, the distant hills were more easy to see. This allowed them to match them to orbiter photos of the general vacinity.
The Sojourner landing set found two fairly large hills in the distance that were used to pinpoint their spot.
The two current rovers also sent back images from about a mile high just before landing for the very purpose of finding them from orbit. (Technically the camera was on the outer appuratus, not the rovers themselves.)
This is partly in response to the lost Polar Lander, which they are still looking for to gain clues to what went wrong. The fact that Polar Lander didn't send radio signals nor images is why it is still lost. Thus, Polar Lander is in the same boat as the Soviet landers and Beagle.
It is not nationalism bias, at least not yet.
Table-ized A.I.
The article links to a downsized picture. If you really want in on the fun, download the 6.2 MB full size image from the MRO website.
The Pathfinder lander itself is labeled MPF. It's about 2/3 of the way across the image (to the right) and perhaps 500 pixels from the top. It appears lighter than the surrounding material, roughly triangular in shape, and has a slight shadow to the right.
I'm not sure which point they think is the adorable little Sojourner (pic of mockup next to Spirit and Odyssey on earth), but I think it's the two light grey pixels with a shadow about 15-20 pixels north of Pathfinder. That may just be one of the rocks it studied, though.
The parachute and backshell are also labeled. The round object is the aerodynamic backshell that covered the top of the lander during entry. It is attached to the parachute, which is draped over the ground a few meters northeast.
The think the heatshield fragments are pretty self-explanatory, although I'm unsure why it's so scattered. It must have broken up, probably tumbling, shortly after being released.
The distribution of parts around the landscape makes some sense if you know how it landed. Pathfinder entered the Martian atmosphere at about 17,000 mph. It aerobraked using the heatshield down to about 900 mph. After two minutes, the parachute deployed and the heat shield was released. The lander was then lowered on a tether so it would be clear of the backshell. 8 seconds before touchdown, the airbags inflated and retrorockets fired. 2 seconds before touchdown, the tether was cut, with the retrorockets carrying the backshell safely away from the lander, and the Pathfinder bounced down onto its airbags.
I think the Pathfinder payed for itself just in coolness (come on...airbags! Who thinks this stuff up?). Add science and engineering lessons learned, and this mission is priceless.
The pathfinder rover is 63cm long. How many toasters are 63cm long? Come on Slashdot. If you're going to make a comparison, at least ensure it is apt.
that's not a sojourner, it's a SCHOONER!
I guess it's this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjiGH9QNiU0
Definitely worth finding.